Unpacking the source code

If you have downloaded the gzip file with the source code and saved it as modsecurity-apache.tar.gz you can use the following command to unpack it:

$ tar xfvz modsecurity-apache.tar.gz

This will unpack the source code into a subfolder with the name modsecurity-apache. It will also create a directory structure in this folder where the different subfolders will hold the source code, documentation, and sample rules, among other things. A typical layout of the directories is as follows:

• modsecurity/apache2

  Contains the source code to ModSecurity as well as the files needed to build the binary module

• modsecurity/doc

  Contains the ModSecurity reference guide in HTML and PDF format

• modsecurity/rules

  Contains .conf files with pre-configured rules useful for stopping a variety of attacks. These rule files are known as the core ruleset, and this ruleset is continuously refined by Breach Security.

• modsecurity/tools

  Contains supporting tools such as a Perl script to update rules (which is created during the compilation process).